Shadows and Strongholds (11 page)

Brunin was incredulous. That dishevelled dirty girl was Joscelin's daughter? The one responsible for choosing his mount? He had been carrying the hazy vision of a demure, tidy girl with a sweet smile, but that now dissipated faster than smoke in a brisk wind. This one had the sinew)' wildness of a young vixen.

Joscelin drew rein under the shed. Jump down,' he commanded, and spread his arms.

The girl drew her sleeve across her eyes. With trembling chin, but not a shred of hesitation, she did as he bade, leaping from the thatch with absolute trust. He caught her cleanly, but with a loud whoof as his breath was forced from his lungs. The roan sidled once and then stood firm. The girl embraced her father's neck in a stranglehold and buried her face against his mailed breast.

'What were you doing up there, sweetheart?' Joscelin asked. To Brunin, who, in the interests of self-preservation, was accustomed to listening for every nuance in adult speech, his lord's tone carried enquiry, amusement and only a hint of reproof.

The girl wriggled. 'Nothing.'

'A strange place to be doing it, child. Where is your mother?'

She shrugged and raised her head, appraising Brunin with a bright grey stare. He hastily looked away. 'Marion threw one of my juggling balls out of the window because I wouldn't play midwives with her,' she said indignantly. 'So I pushed her and she fell over and banged her head.' She held out the ball of red leather she had been gripping tightly in her fist 'Look, it's split.'

Joscelin bit his lip and Brunin saw that he was fighting not to laugh. 'Just like Marion's head then,' he said.

'She only bumped it, but she screamed as if she was dying, and Mama was angry with me because she didn't see what happened.' Hawise's voice rose with grievance.

'So you judged it best not to stay?'

She nodded and rubbed her cheek against Joscelin's mail.

'That still does not explain what you were doing on the store-shed roof.'

'The ladder slipped,' she said, as if surprised that he should ask.

'Hawise…' A warning note entered Joscelin's voice.

'I was playing.' She drew back to look at him. 'You said that when you came to a siege here before you wed Mama, there were ladders up against the keep wall and that men climbed them and fought on the battlements.' Joscelin sighed and, shaking his head, tweaked a tangled strand of her hair. 'Perhaps I did, but that is no call for you to re-enact the event. You saw what happened to your ball when Marion threw it out of the window. What would have happened if you had slipped off this roof?'

'I wasn't frightened.'

'That is not necessarily a good thing,' Joscelin said. 'I certainly was.'

'I am sorry, Papa.' She looked down as if contrite but Brunin had his doubts.

Her father sighed and gave her a little shake. 'All right,' he said. 'But I want you to go straight away and make your peace with Marion and your mother.' He prepared to let her down off the horse.

'Can't I stay with you?' She looked round him at Brunin. 'Do you like Morel?'

Brunin opened his mouth, but was unsure what to say or how to address her. Nothing thus far in his life had prepared him to respond.

'Child, where are your manners?' Some of the indulgence left Joscelin's expression. 'That is not the kind of question to ask of a gift you have given, and especially not before introductions are made. Nor,' he added wryly, 'are you fit to be introduced at the moment. You look like a hoyden out of a gutter. Now go, do as I say, and when the time is right you can ask Brunin all the questions you want.'

She hesitated as if she might further argue, but then seemed to think the better of it and relaxed so that Joscelin could set her down. Shaking out her dress, she looked again at Brunin and gave him a smile.

'I hope you do,' she said. 'I chose him.' And then she was gone, lifting her skirts above her ankles to run long-strided like a boy, her wild auburn hair bouncing at her shoulders.

Joscelin sighed. 'What am I to do with her?' he said, and then he gave a reluctant chuckle. 'I am her father and I ask that?' He turned to Brunin. 'One rule to remember is always judge on your instincts, never on first appearances.'

'Yes, my lord,' Brunin said neutrally. He was still struggling with his astonishment. He didn't have a sister, but if he did, he dared not imagine what punishment such appearance and behaviour would merit at Whittington. Rather than feeling censure, he sympathised with her plight, although his own instinct would have been to hide in a corner rather than climb conspicuously on to a roof. Judging with one's instincts was not as simple a matter as Lord Joscelin made it sound. First, you had to trust those instincts.

Hawise held her breath and screwed up her face as her mother attempted to comb the tangles from her hair. It was her father's colour, but possessed Sybilla's curly wildness and the only time it was calm was when it was wet, or so severely braided that it hurt her scalp.

Sybilla clucked her tongue. 'I've never seen such knots.' Delicately she plucked out a broken stalk of straw and a pigeon's breast feather, evidence of Hawise's scramble on to the store-shed roof. Not that Hawise had told her mother anything about that—had just let it be assumed that she had flounced off to the stables.

'She should have been a boy,' Marion said with a superior sniff. 'Then she could wear it short.' She was sitting on the coffer swinging her legs. Her own butter-gold hair shone in two neat, silky braids, twined with blue ribbons that matched her immaculate gown of napped Flemish wool. The hectic spots on her cheeks and another red mark slightly higher on her temple bore mute testimony to earlier traumas.

Hawise glowered at Marion, who smiled sweetly. Hawise had made her apology, albeit a somewhat forced one, but she had only done so to please her father, not because she was truly sorry. As far as she was concerned, Marion had deserved the thump… and was in danger of receiving another one.

'Welsh women have shorter hair too,' Marion said. She wound one of her braids around her forefinger and examined the smooth, golden gleam. 'So do nuns.'

'Well, I'm not Welsh, or a nun.'

'Your papa might betroth you to a Welshman or make you take vows.'

'Marion, enough. Pass me that length of braid, the green one,' Sybilla said with laboured patience. Marion hopped off the coffer and meekly did as she was asked. Gathering Hawise's hair, Sybilla expertly wove the braid through and round, taming the wayward mass into a semblance of order.

'There,' she said. 'No one would ever think that you had been any further than the bower door this morning, hmmm?'

Hawise reddened beneath her mother's knowing scrutiny and fiddled with her belt. It was woven in the same pattern as the braid on her hair and the ends were weighted with delicate silver fillets. Her ripped gown had been consigned with a sigh from Sybilla to the mending basket, along with the split juggling ball, and Hawise was now wearing her second-best dress of green wool with yellow embroidery.

She thought about the boy; how fine he had looked astride Morel, his black hair and dark eyes a perfect match with his mount. His face had been unreadable and her question to him had elicited no response, save perhaps a tensing of his fingers on the bridle. She wasn't sure that she was going to like him; by the same rule, he probably wasn't sure about her either.

There was a brief warning of footsteps outside the chamber door and her papa entered, bringing with him the pungent aroma of hard travel. His three deerhounds bounced at his side, tails swishing like whips, pink tongues lolling. She cast a covert glance towards the squires who had followed him into the room bearing sundry items of equipment. Brunin had her father's helm, arming cap and mail coif and was panting from his climb up the stairs thus encumbered.

Her mother hastened to greet Joscelin with a kiss on the mouth and a murmur of welcome, then turned to Brunin. 'Put those down in that basket in the corner,' she commanded.

'Yes, my lady.' Eyes lowered, he did swiftly as she bade him. When he returned, her mother laid one hand lightly on his shoulder and with the other tilted his face on her palm.

'Look up, child,' she said.

He lifted his lids. From her position a little to one side and behind her mother, Hawise was struck by how dark his eyes truly were. Not the usual hazel or mild amber-brown, but a colour that was much closer to sable.

'That is better. Always look me in the eye when I am speaking to you.'

Hawise gnawed her underlip and shuffled her feet at that remark.

Sybilla gave a satisfied nod and dropped her hand to his shoulder. 'I am Lord Joscelin's wife, Lady Sybilla, and I welcome you into our household. I know everything will seem strange for a time until you have grown accustomed to us, but I want you to feel that Ludlow is your home.'

'Yes, my lady.'

His flat response gave nothing away. Hawise tilted her head to one side while she absorbed the nuance. It might be useful to learn how to do that, she thought.

'These are my daughters.' Her mother turned Brunin gently with the palm of her hand. 'Sybilla, whom we call Sibbi, and Hawise. Marion, like you, is being fostered as one of our own.'

His gaze lingered briefly on Sibbi before passing to Marion who was fluttering her lashes like an afflicted heifer, making Hawise want to kick her. Then he looked at Hawise. She drew in her breath and held her stomach tight, afraid that he was going to give her away and mention the store-shed roof. However, he said nothing.

'Welcome.' Sibbi smiled compassionately like a Madonna as she tried to ape their mother. Hawise had to stop herself from making a face. Obviously ill at case and unsure of his ground, the boy bowed in Sibbi's direction. Hawise remembered her papa telling her that it would be strange for him in the early days and that, as he only had brothers, he wasn't used to girls. She was longing to ask him about Morel, but not in front of Marion.

'Can you juggle?' she asked, blurting out the words before she had time to think better of them.

The sable eyes widened. 'Juggle, Mistress Hawise?'

He had remembered her name and he spoke it with formal propriety Hawise was torn between wanting to continue and wishing that she had never opened her mouth. 'I just wondered.'

'No, mistress.' He shook his head and she saw his glance go to the nearby sewing basket with her torn dress and the split ball. 'But I could learn.' She thought she saw the hint of a smile at his mouth corners.

'You never know when you are going to need the skill,' Joscelin agreed. While the older squires had been divesting him of hauberk and gambeson, he had been listening with amusement, and, like his wife, studying the subtle undertones at play. 'If you have finished your introductions, I am in sore need of a bathtub, and there's fetching and carrying for the lad to do.'

'By all means.' Sybilla removed her hand from Brunin's shoulder. 'I expect you'll want food brought up?'

Joscelin nodded. 'Enough for all of us,' he said. 'We might as well dine in the private chamber tonight.'

Laying a table had been part of Brunin's early training at Whittington. With his grandmother's strict tuition and insistence on the etiquette of the court, he could have prepared a trestle for a feast, let alone a simple family meal. He straightened the cloth of embroidered linen and began setting out the cups at intervals. Further into the room, Lord Joscelin was bathing in a barrel bathtub and murmuring to his wife who was listening to him with folded arms and nodding now and again. Once or twice she laughed, the sound throaty and warm. Brunin couldn't imagine his own parents ever talking in so informal and relaxed a manner, and his mother never laughed.

The atmosphere at Ludlow had overwhelmed Brunin. It had swept out to engulf him like a huge, joyous embrace, and he was still struggling to regain his balance. He kept thinking that it was a dream and, in a moment, he was going to awaken and discover himself back at Whittington, placing bread trenchers beneath his grandmother's gimlet stare. Indeed, when he looked up from his task, he was being stared at—but with nothing more hostile than intense curiosity.

'I'm fostered too,' said the kitten-featured fair-haired girl who had been introduced to him as Marion.

'Yes, I heard Lady Sybilla say so,' he murmured as he set the decorated salt dish directly in front of the lord's place.

'My mama and papa are dead.' She adjusted the salt dish an inch to the left and crumbled a pinch of the greyish crystals on to her tongue. 'Yours aren't though.'

'No,' he said, unsure how to respond. The intensity of her hyssop-blue gaze was unsettling. He wondered what would happen if he pushed the salt cellar back to its original place.

'My papa fell from his horse and broke his neck, and my mama died the day after in childbirth, so I had to come and live here.'

'Oh.'

When he didn't say anything else, she put her hands behind her back and tilted her head coyly to one side. 'Do you think I'm pretty?'

Brunin looked round, but everyone was busy and he couldn't abandon his task. 'Yes,' he said. It was true. She was as dainty as a daisy.

She smiled and dimples appeared in her cheeks. 'Truly you do?'

He nodded and moved away to fetch the trenchers that a servant had piled up on a side table. He was aware of her scrutiny and it made him fumble and almost drop one.

'Are you betrothed?'

Wordlessly Brunin shook his head.

'I'm not either… but I will be one day' She wrapped one of her silky braids around her forefinger. 'Will you sit next to me when we eat?'

He dealt the trenchers along the cloth. 'That is for Lord Joscelin to say'

'Don't worry, he'll let you.' Her smile deepened. 'I'm glad you're here.'

Hawise arrived from the other end of the room where she had been helping to sort through her father's baggage. 'Mama says you're not to pester Brunin,' she said with an irritated glance at Marion, and taking a pile of trenchers began setting them at the places that Brunin had yet to do.

Marion looked affronted. 'I'm not.' She gazed towards Sybilla who was still talking to her husband. 'She wouldn't send you to tell me anyway.'